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I sight the Pacific as did Balboa in 1513,
alone at ten in the morning from a bare high hill.
I walk the beach then sit with my shadow among a colony
of boulders that are my size, just dumb friends, some full
and smooth, some cleft and jagged. I sit where the beach
has no sand, where waves swish at shore like breaths, in
and out, sifting through rocks the size of a man's
head, grinding rock against rock.
Silhouettes of ships sit in
watch for hours, breaking the thin
horizon which blends into gray sky. This
was the South Sea to Balboa, and he spent his
last days at the Gulf of San Miguel in Tierra Firme
far south of this California coast building bergantines and
dreaming his vision for the New World. Instead of hiding in
this death-cave of introversion, I would put on the tall blond
swashbuckler's life, wear it like an oversized coat of armor.
I would grow that blond beard, roll that rock aside,
crawl from burial within that flour barrel and
step into the ship's quarterdeck as a
stowaway, that golden mastiff,
Leoncico, at my side. stand before
the judgement of the world like a newborn.
A wave hits a boulder, geysers
then trickles back between rocks ground
round as a woman's breasts. Time passes. The growl of
grinding rocks grows more confident, violent. I walk the brink
as if caught within the aftermath, caught within the emotional
ruins of an ancient war. A wave leaps, takes a thundering
fall, rises again in collision, foams. A slick wetness
coats the rocks and my breaths of air. In the calm
water this side of the waiting ships, a host of
gulls visits a dark seaweed bank. Three
rise, hover like ghosts, then light,
one with wings raised like arms,
tips feathered like fingers.
The sharp cry of a woman. The
gift-daughter of Chief Chima, matured
at his side, and also the slim Fulvia, the willing
captive. Both girls young, in love, all the long black
hair flowing wild in the wind, teaching him the ways of the
wilderness, teaching understanding, kindness, resurrecting the
one ghost that is within us all. I want them both, to drive
into their brown bodies as he, the three of us forged into
one with the passion, the compassion of a savior, but
one who will not die upon the cutting block, one
who will turn from that block, take sword
in hand and walk like an immortal
into the New World.
Waves ricochet from shore,
thunder in collision, eject spume
skyward. A patch of barmy foam floats
delicately on the surface. I bend to touch slick
white splotches of tiny fish and egg-like
bubbles against the green sea.
How content I'll feel after
sighting the South Sea, after
waiting till the tide brings the ocean
to me, to wade the salt water, it sloshing
about my knees and, in a verbal orgy with my brother,
Pizarro and twenty-five others as audience, annex an entire
ocean, possess the Other Ocean, claiming everything from pole to
pole, within and without, the astral seas and lands and coasts and
islands for the paternal Kings of Castile, the deceased Isabel and
her daughter, that mentally unbalanced, bewitched and ill-used
Dona Juana and for King Fernando. How washed clean I'll feel,
how consummated. Then we'll besiege the trees, first cutting
crosses upon them, three at a time for the Holy
Trinity, washing the wooden wounds with
sea water, then with slashing swords,
hack limbs, leaves, tops, trunks.
I watch the swells regiment
and turn on shore, watch them become
a thin erecting wall, a pale translucent green,
a stained glass window or mirror rolling to reveal
first the suspended tan silt from shore like a life
reading in sand then a dark resurrected body
of seaweed. But I will be forewarned of
the governor, the red-haired Pedrarias
with his envious green eyes, having heeded
the solemn warning from Messer Codro, the Italian
astrologer. And when the planets line up as gold lights
in the evening sky, I shall not be gay and foolish, and it will
do no good for the aging bellicose Pedrarias to send the dark
long-nosed Pizarro to the Other Ocean looking for me with
his large soccer eyes, and when his word comes, his
daughter Maria will not be my blessed bride by
proxy, that virgin still living in Spain will
not be a factor, her father will not be
my father. I shall not leave the
bergantines waiting and go to
the scheming Pedrarias when
he calls. I shall not stand
trial for treason. I shall
not walk valorous and
serene to the cutting
block.
I pace the brink, furious
with what could have been. I shall
set sail upon the South Sea, Discover Peru,
Mexico, become the Compassionate Conquistador
of the Inca, the Aztec, cast devils from the history
of the New World. Off I will go, bestride his stallion, my
vengeance coagulating. First, that bastard, Pizarro. I'll slit
his throat in the jungle of the march back to Darien. Then the
stout Cortes, that little pettifogger, he shall never become a god
to Montezuma. There shall be no Indian blood-letting. The New
World shall be different world. I take Balboa's head from
the tall pole where it has set exposed for days, put on
that head, become Vasco Nunez, slip that serrated
neck over mine, the crimson clots stringing
down my chest, sight through sockets where
the eyes have been eaten out by birds.
I take flight, speak in his tongue
at the helm of his bergantin,
careen the coast of the
Americas. |
